RDA: Fundamentals to Implementation

Rebecca Guenther has 35 years of experience in national libraries, primarily working on library technology standards related to digital libraries. Most of her professional life has been at the Library of Congress developing national and international standards related to metadata. She has served on numerous standards and implementation committees, several ...

Rebecca Guenther has 35 years of experience in national libraries, primarily working on library technology standards related to digital libraries. Most of her professional life has been at the Library of Congress developing national and international standards related to metadata. She has served on numerous standards and implementation committees, several as chair, is widely published in professional literature, and has given many tutorials, workshops, and presentations. She recently began to explore use of semantic web technology and the potential of linked data. She left the Library of Congress in August 2011 to work as a consultant on metadata development and planning. She currently lives in New York and is again working for LC on MODS, PREMIS, and the Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative, teaching in NYU's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, and doing assorted other consultant activities.

This is a two-day workshop. By registering here, you are signing up to attend both parts on Wednesday and Thursday, March 26th & 27th from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM each day.

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is the new cataloging code that is replacing AACR2 for the description of bibliographic resources. It provides a set of guidelines and instructions for formulating data to support resource discovery. The Library of Congress and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) implemented RDA on March 31, 2013 for authority records contributed through that program, and institutions have been implementing it for bibliographic records since that time.

This two-day workshop provides attendees with information about the scope and purpose of RDA and details about the rules for creaing RDA descriptions. Fundamentals of the Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Resources (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) will be reviewed. The wokshop will highlight differences between instructions for AACR2 and RDA, as well as how RDA is encoded in the MARC 21 bibliographic and authority formats. Exercises will be provided (to be done at home as well as in class) to facilitate understanding of the concepts. The workshop materials are based on those developed and made available by the Library of Congress for its cataloger training.

Who should attend:Librarians and information professionals who are working with resource descriptions at institutions that are planning to implement RDA, or who will be working with RDA records. Attendees should have previous knowledge of/experience with cataloging practices using AACR2 and MARC 21.

Objectives:

Become familiar with the organization and structure of RDA

Become familiar with the RDA toolkit

Understand the FRBR model behind it

Learn about RDA's basic principles and elements

Understand the differences between RDA and AACR2

Learn the basic rules for resource description in RDA

Understand how relationships between entities are expressed in RDA

Understand its relation to other metadata standards and the Semantic Web

Learn how to encode RDA in MARC

Tentative Agenda:

Day One - March 26, 201410:00-11:00 FRBR Fundamentals11:00-11:45 MARC, RDA and FRBR11:45-12:30 Using the RDA toolkit 12:30-1:30 Lunch1:30-3:00 Introduction to RDA3:00-4:00 Identifying manifestations and items4:00-5:00 Describing carriers and identifying works